


Shield

by audreycritter



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, i just write the same story over and over now, it's fine, what is a timeline even
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-03 18:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12152310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: Bruce is hurt and Dick is sticking to his dad's side like glue. Pure hurt/comfort batfam fic for a friend.





	Shield

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is just the story I write now, over and over, it's fine, it's not a big deal.

The world came back to him in pieces of awareness. First, there was the grinding sound and a noise like the tide sucking at sand. Then, someone speaking as if from across a vast cavern.

After that, the flickers of light on the other side of his closed lids, and  _then_  the pain. It was throbbing and acidic at once, and he vaguely registered the throbbing as being in sync with the tidal rhythm.

His heart beat.

Someone had poured molten rock into his stomach, it was so hard and burning; the scraping, grinding noise increased. That seemed like it was coming from inside his skull.

“Hey,” the voice said, closing the gap with startling speed. There was a hand on his shoulder, his face. “Relax. Just relax.”

Oh. It was his teeth making the grinding noise, his jaw a tight mess of tension. Probably because his stomach hurt.

 _Hurt_  was too inconsequential, as a word.

“Dick,” he said, forcing his heavy lids up and open. The last thing he remembered was the flash of a handgun, a blur of blue and black. Even with his eyes open the world was fuzzy and too bright. “Dick,” he said again, and it was a sob.

He had to get up, he had to go find…

“Woah,” the voice said, a hand pressing against his shoulder. A familiar voice. “You’re staying right where you are.”

“No,” he said, attempting and failing sternness. It sounded like a pathetic moan to even his own ears but he didn’t care, he  _had_ to find Dick, he had to make sure he hadn’t slept while his son…while  _another_  son…

“Bruce, I’m right here. Look at me.”

Dick. Dick’s voice. Sweet, sweet music. Sad and a little frantic but  _there_.

The shapes above him solidified and clarified and he was blinking slowly at Dick’s face, looming near his own. The young man wore a concerned frown, was a little pale, but none the worse for wear. When Bruce’s eyes met his, he sagged a bit in relief.

“Hey, there,” he said. “You were starting to scare me.”

“Sorry,” Bruce said; easily, automatically. It was always the hardest thing or the easiest thing to apologize to Dick. There was never any in-between.

Had he had a nightmare? Something had happened but now he wasn’t sure what.

“What…” he stopped and licked his lips, because his mouth was dry and it hurt to talk.

“You got between me and a bullet is what happened,” Dick said, leaning out of his line of sight. Bruce wanted to protest but a second later Dick returned. “I’m sorry if this knocks you out again, but Al gave me strict instructions to keep your meds strong.”

Bruce was clenching his teeth again and didn’t argue, didn’t say  _they won’t work_  because he couldn’t.

But seconds ticked by and he was aware of Dick’s hand, now against his head and tangled in his hair, pushing it off his forehead. And then warm relief, faint but real, seeped through him. His eyes began to drift shut and he forced them back open to stare at Dick.

“Rest,” Dick ordered.

Bruce shook his head.

“You stubborn ass,” Dick said, a little fondly and a little angrily. He put a hand over his eyes, hiding part of his face from Bruce, and exhaled. “Why’d you do it?”

“Always,” Bruce said, words a bit easier now, “worth it.”

It was. It was worth agony sloshing in his gut a hundred times over if Dick was breathing, alive, not suffering the same.

“Idiot,” Dick mumbled, scrubbing at his face. One hand was still in Bruce’s hair, like he was anchoring him there.

 _Don’t cry_ , Bruce wanted to tell him, a little desperately. It was getting harder to keep his eyes open. It sort of pissed him off, even while the numbness flooding through him let him breathe.

“Sleep, B,” Dick said. “I’ll stay.”

Bruce slept.

He woke again and again over the next hours— days?— without grasping a real idea of the passage of time. They were in the cave, he could tell that much. Sometimes Alfred would be there, sometimes Dick. It was always too hot inside him and too cold all around, until a time he woke and  _had_  to get out of the cave.

Halfway across the room he knew he wasn’t going to make it even to the stairs, much less up them, but then Dick was beside him looping Bruce’s leaden arm around his shoulders.

“Where to?” Dick asked, instead of turning them both back around.

“Don’t care,” Bruce huffed, almost changing his mind on the first step. It wasn’t as bad as when he first woke, but it was still like shoving batarangs into his own abdomen to stay upright. “Somewhere…warm.”

They were up another five steps now.

“Yeah, I’m starting to get sick of it down here, too,” Dick said. “Just the first floor, then, okay?”

Bruce nodded. One lifted foot at a time and he  _knew_  he was putting too much weight on Dick, leaning too heavily, by the time they reached the parlor. Dick’s usual cheerful complaining and ribbing was absent and Bruce filed it away as something to be worried about as soon as he wasn’t about to fall over.

They made it as far as the first room with a decent couch, the big living room with its high ceilings and windows. It was dark outside.

Bruce passed out before he’d even stretched out all the way on the couch.

When he woke, it was to Alfred moving around the room closing, rather than opening, curtains. A tray with water and toast and a steaming mug sat on the table across from the couch. Bruce groaned and turned his head into the cushions.

“None of that now, Master Bruce,” Alfred said, dragging a chair over beside the couch. “If you’ve removed yourself from medical equipment, it falls on you to hydrate and feed yourself. Up, then.”

“Mmf,” Bruce said, sore stomach twisting at the idea of eating anything. “Later.”

“Now would be preferable,” Alfred said mildly and Bruce lifted his head from the cushions to study Alfred’s face. It was calm, but wearied, and his words had none of the sharper sarcasm he often prodded Bruce with after displays of stupidity.

“That bad?” Bruce asked, his throat dry. The water did sound pretty good after all.

“It gave us quite a scare,” Alfred said, refusing to meet his gaze. He held out the water, a straw bent over the rim.

Bruce drank and sat up with his eyes closed. He didn’t protest when Alfred wanted to look over the stomach wound, when the mug of broth was pressed into his hands. The toast wasn’t forced and Bruce left it alone with a brief glare of disgust.

When Alfred stood to carry the tray out, there was a moment where he paused as if he wished to say something, but instead he patted Bruce’s cheek and said quietly, “Rest a bit more.”

Almost as soon as he’d left the room, Bruce bewildered in his wake, Dick came in with a smoothie in one hand and his phone in the other. He planted himself on the couch right next to Bruce, while Bruce sank back feeling already exhausted. He’d maybe fight it, except for the profound sense that it would somehow distress or disappoint Alfred and he had no real reason to get up and disregard that.

“I’ll stay put,” he said to Dick, not wanting to drive him away but not wanting to keep him stuck there. “You don’t have to babysit me.”

“Okay,” Dick said, without getting up. His whole back and neck looked stiff with tension, not at all relaxed or falsely loose the way Dick often held himself. He was usually like a cat, deceptively limp but ready to spring.

Now, he was like a garden statue. Bruce thought if he touched him, the young man might shatter.

“What’s wrong?” Bruce asked, closing his eyes.

“Nothing,” Dick said. “Nothing.”

Bruce waited.

“Just…” Dick set the smoothie and phone on the table and crossed his arms, hugging himself. “You didn’t  _have_  to do that. For me.”

“But I did,” Bruce said, his mind a bit clearer than it had been when he’d first woken. He remembered the gun, putting himself between the barrel and Dick just in time. He had no memories of after, or how he’d made it to the cave.

“If you…” Dick’s voice sounded shaky and he was staring at his hands, folded in his lap. “If you hadn’t made it, the last thing I said to you would have been that I was sick of dealing with…with your shit.”

“Me, too,” Bruce said. It seemed like the world might crack and break if Dick didn’t smile soon. Dick looked over at him, startled, and then an uneasy grin flittered across his mouth.

“I didn’t mean it,” Dick said. “And you didn’t have to go get shot to prove me wrong.”

There was a lump in Bruce’s throat he couldn’t speak around, one that he wanted to blame on the incredibly high doses of painkillers Alfred must have had him on.

 _I’d never forgive myself,_  was what he wanted to say,  _if you were hurt and there was a single thing I could have done just a little differently to prevent it._

He swung his arm around Dick’s shoulders instead and tugged him close. Dick sagged a little against him. There was a faint sniffle.

“Love you, too,” Dick mumbled.

Bruce knew it wasn’t the painkillers that made him drop a kiss into Dick’s hair.

“Can I get you anything?” Dick asked, sniffling again.

“It’s not your fault,” Bruce said. “What happened. What I did. It was my choice and I’d do it again.”

Dick’s head, pressed against his loose t-shirt sleeve, moved up and down in a shaky nod. He inhaled and the stress seemed to melt out of him at the same time his voice grew in confidence and steadiness.

“You know it’d suck if I lost you, too,” Dick said. “It works both ways.”

Bruce’s heart skipped a little beat, a pain sharp and clear and bright through him because he knew Dick meant it, wasn’t just saying things. And somehow that made the pain in his stomach a bit easier to bear. It frightened him a little, in a deep and buried way he didn’t want to admit, that he wasn’t sure until Dick said it that he believed it.

“Alright,” he said, tears springing to his eyes. It had to be those  _damn_  painkillers and he couldn’t even say he didn’t need them. He wasn’t looking forward to them wearing off all the way.

“I’m going to go get a book,” Dick said, slipping out from under Bruce’s arm. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“I don’t think I can,” Bruce said, with a slight groan. He didn’t realize how dizzy he was from sitting until Dick got up; he curled up on the couch again with his head on a soft pillow. It was one of the bedroom pillows and he hadn’t even noticed until just that moment.

“Allingham?” Dick asked. “Or LeHane?”

“The first,” Bruce said.

It was only a few minutes later that Dick was reading, perched on the end of the couch by Bruce’s feet and absently leaning on Bruce’s knee. The sound of his voice swimming through the narrative had a lulling effect and Bruce gave up trying to stay awake by the end of the first chapter.

He drifted to sleep listening to Dick read, and he knew he’d meant it: he’d do it again in a heartbeat, step in front of violence that could tear him in two, to keep that voice in the world.

And it would be worth it.

When he finally fell asleep, it was with the conviction that for once he’d done thoroughly and absolutely the right thing.


End file.
